To Jean-Max Noyer for believing in this project.

To all current theorists of document and documentation history: Boyd Rayward, Michael Buckland, Sylvie Fayet-Scribe, Ron Day, and the entire DOCAM network.

To Stéphanie Manfroid for access to the Mundaneum archives and for her advice and knowledge of the work of Paul Otlet.

To the HyperOtlet team with whom we were able to carry out good work on the work of Paul Otlet and more particularly on the Traité de Documentation.

To all my colleagues and friends of the Université Bordeaux Montaigne.

To my students, past and present, who granted me their attention.

To my rare and precious readers, whom I try to make think and travel beyond the obvious.

To my loved ones, my family and all those who look after me.

To Bernard Stiegler for demonstrating that the technique deserved to be seriously thought out.

To the spirit of the Mundaneum.

To Paul Otlet, without whom this book would not have been possible.

The ultimate documentation problem. In each science, in each order of activity, it is worth seeking to define its ultimate problem, a state which is certainly far from being reached, but which is likely to stimulate and coordinate particular research by setting a general direction for it. The ultimate problem of scientific knowledge: to know so well all reality, its beings, its phenomena and its laws that it is possible to disintegrate everything that exists, to reconstitute it, to order it in different ways. The ultimate problem of technology: One man having only to push a button so that all the factories of the world, perfectly adjusted to each other, start to produce all that is necessary for all humanity. The ultimate problem of Society: Freedom creates divergence. In a borderline state, there would be no need to have recourse to others. Everyone could obtain everything he would desire by appealing directly to things alone, and by dispensing with men. Thus the machine would have become the liberator of each one, its functioning being done by one and things being arranged in the order suitable for that one.

(Paul Otlet 1935, p. 390 author’s translation)